The wellness buzzwords these days are not phrases like work-life balance, but work-life integration and work life-harmony. There is something lovely about the idea of a sort of harmony between the segments of your life.
As Steve Job famously said, “It’s all life.” Spoken like a person driven. But what about the rest of us? Not all of us are empire-builders. Some of us actually love our lives outside of work and want to protect what I have come to call sacred space, and this sense of spaciousness doesn’t quite mesh in a world running on a timetable.
On the other hand, the word harmony suggests flow. I think of an orchestra conductor standing in the pit and engaging musicians in turn by the sweep of a baton. There’s a sort of elegance of give and take, creating a shifting, drifting, melody with many voices. Like doing yoga for 30 minutes at lunch before returning to a zoom call, then taking five minutes to do a short meditation before finishing a report for the executive team.
But even this seems simplistic. In a coaching mindset, we look at a full 10 domains of wellness. Life is far more complex than a binary work-life pattern, even though media and culture encourage us to over-simplify the emotional-intellectual pull. When you consider how “balanced” your life is, try looking at the full spectrum of wellness, not just a slice. It might surprise you how well you’re really doing.
Here is the expanded version of the domains:
- Emotional: how well are your emotional needs being met?
- Spiritual: where do you find meaning and purpose?
- Physical: are you physically safe? Physically fit?
- Social: how healthy is your social support system?
- Intellectual: how do you feed you mind? What part does curiosity play in your world?
- Environmental: does your environment support or inspire you?
- Career: does your work fulfill you, give you reason and pride and purpose?
- Financial: does your financial base allow for personal growth and expansion?
When you look at each segment, rate it on a scale of 1 to 10, with one being flatline, and 10 being awesomely awesome. You will likely find that most of your scores cluster in similar zones, and that’s to be expected from high achievers. It’s the outliers that you want to take a look at, and perhaps consider making some changes to better support your well-being.
We are complex beings. Shoe-horning a complicated life into two boxes just won’t work anymore. Maybe covid world did us all a favor. What was cracked before is now broken, and we all know that a bone broken knits together stronger. We’re spending more time BEing and less time DOing.
Cynthia Gregory is an award-winning author and executive coach specializing in life and career empowerment strategies. Are you ready for 2021? Join Cynthia for a expertly curated six-week, small-group MasterMind Circle set yourself up to accomplish more in 2021 than you dared dream. For more information visit https://cgregorycreativity.com/book-me/